


Incident of the Two Hundred Thousand

by deepandlovelydark



Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966), Rawhide (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Aftermath of Torture, Bubble Bath, Character Death, Civil War, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark Comedy, Drinking, Gun Violence, Period-Typical Racism, Smoking, Soup, most of the things you'd tag the movie for in short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-25 02:57:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19736938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: "Of course I couldn't be Rowdy Yates," Blondie says, adjusting his poncho self-consciously. "He's soft, he's a pushover. Not like me in the least.""Bet you could," Tuco argues, downing his fourth tequila. "Though that story, I wouldn't have you for partner. Maybe that Favor fellow would work out.""Or not. You think either of those cowboys would make suitable adversaries for us?" Angel Eyes inquires, puffing out a smoke ring."Only one way to find out, you know..."





	1. how to break a cowboy

**Author's Note:**

> ...result of a long strange weekend, subject to fairly dramatic shifts between chapters, and rather more focused on the GBU 'verse than Rawhide; something like the first season or two of Rawhide may be assumed to have happened, but during the course of the Civil War itself. Gil and Rowdy are the only two characters from the show to appear, and I won't claim that either's entirely in character- but they're consistent with the brutalism of GBU. 
> 
> The metafictional framing summary, much as it amuses me, is simply that; the story itself is played quite straight. 
> 
> As straight, that is, as a story staring Rowdy "Blondie" Yates can possibly be...

“I had a commission,” Favor says, throat hoarse with dust.

Rowdy knows that. Would know this story to his bones if Favor never said another word about it in his life, and just let it be- how could he ever forget, with every sideline look from the older man searing into him like the desert sun. Can’t be run away from. Only endured.

“A reputation- a fine reputation. Work I was good at, bringing beef on the hoof to hungry soldiers. Men under my command.”

“Guess you still have one man,” Rowdy says softly, gazing into the fire. Halfway towards a joke if Favor wants to hear it, even if that’s not very often these days.

He gets the laugh though, bitter as quinine but still good to hear. “That’s right. One man. Just you, me, and the reward poster for one Rowdy Yates, wanted for bank robbery and murder.”

Rowdy nods. Scrapes up a last bite of bacon grease and crumbled hardtack with his spoon, can’t quite help glancing at Favor’s half-full plate. “I still can’t believe you saved me. Shooting the noose out with me in it, that was as fine a bit of gunplay as I’ve ever heard of…”

“I don’t know as I believe it either,” Favor says, broodingly. “To give everything up, just for the sake of a wet-behind-the-ears tenderfoot like you…you know they’ll never believe you didn’t do it.”

“I know.” It’d do them both good, he thinks, to say how grateful he is that Favor never believed those silly charges; but he’s never yet found a way to say it. Not so as to be sure.

Because maybe Favor does. Maybe the former captain risks life and limb on a daily basis, not for the sake of innocence but just because- it’s him, and if that’s what lies between them he’d never be able to leave.

(Is that even something he wants to do? There’s a chasm opening between them, gaping and unknown; and the more distance between him and the only tie he’s got left on this earth, well, the more Rowdy finds himself clutching at it.)

“Maybe I could do it again.”

“…how’s that?”

Favor shrugs a little (all the girls he’s chased, and he’s forgotten every one for the sake of those broad shoulders). Starts to eat with more animation. “If I could do it once, I could do it again. Say I turned you in-“

“What?”

“Got the reward money for you, and then shot your noose free again. With a couple of good horses standing by, we could make a clean getaway. Everyone would be too surprised to react, just like before.”

Just like before, sure.

Rowdy frowns down at the hat by his side. Empty holes in it now, where there used to be a drawstring- a drawstring lost in dust a whole state away from here. Cut in wild panic when he’d tightened it under his chin and found it too much like the noose, the hanging, feeling the devil bite when he thought he was going to die immediate and breathless-

he can’t do that again. Not even for Mr Favor.

“Maybe we could try it the other way,” Rowdy says lightly. Hopefully. “There’s rewards for deserters too, right? If we found a poster with your face on-“

in the years they’ve known each other, there’s been occasion for Favor to hit his ramrod, sure. Fake fights and discipline on the trail and good-natured slaps on the back that’d leave a weaker man groaning.

But not like this, a blow simple and hard enough to knock him flat into the dirt. His spoon goes flying and lands in the dirt a dozen feet away, spooking their solitary horse.

“You ever say that again, I’ll- why, I’ll-“

the snarl stops, the anger ebbs quickly out of Gil’s face; for a moment Rowdy thinks it’s going to be all right again.

“Know what, don’t worry about it.”

“Uhm.” There’s a little blood. Not worse than he’s had in an easy bar dust-up. “I’m sorry, Mr Favor.”

“You don’t have to be,” Favor says easily. “I saved your life, now I’m giving it back. We’ll call it even.”

Looking back after, Rowdy’s not sure why he doesn’t do anything. Why, with the Navy colt resting comfortably in its holster, he doesn’t make a single move while Favor packs up their possessions, the food, everything they’ve got, rides off on the horse without a second glance.

Looking back on it, he thinks maybe Favor wanted him to shoot.

And he’s just as glad he didn’t, but that’s pretty poor consolation for a man left to die in the desert.


	2. enter the bandito

…Angel Eyes is up to something.

Tuco’s sure of it, suspects he'd know even if he didn't keep an ear out for rumours and muttered legends- that’s the trouble with his ex-partner’s sense of style, it always had the damnedest way of landing them both in the soup. It sounds good, fine, to be the kind of man who can stop a room dead just by walking through the door. In practice it drew targets on their backs and made it impossible to find boltholes from the law, frightened away the kind of people who trusted him when he was just a solitary lurker with a long foolish charge sheet.

And breaking Angel Eyes of that habit, chances are the man would have broken him first. Angel isn’t the kind to take correction easily. What he is, is a man with a good nose for opportunities- and if he thinks that the nonsense about Carson’s gold is worth pursuing, well, that’s a rainbow to try chasing.

“May I ask,” the gunshop owner spits out, managing to stutter on just three syllables. _Some_ people would have killed for that out of hand.

But hey, he’s in a good mood; alive and with a whole skin and armed with a gun that sings a good tune, that’s a fine thing. “You want to know why I needed a weapon at all? I didn’t have one before, that’s why.”

The man moans. Tuco takes a final swig of gooey red liquor and kindly shoves it across the counter.

“See, you get a few men together for a gang, you know? Trustworthy, the kind who won’t shoot you in the back for your gold teeth, so everyone can sleep at night without worrying. All working fine, until they get a sniff of two hundred thousand in gold and then suddenly it’s everyone for himself and somebody steals my horse when I’m having a siesta. Bastards.”

“You have two hundred thousand dollars in gold?” For a frightened man, he’s looking very greedy.

“Not yet,” Tuco admits. “But I will- hey, when I get it I’ll come back here and buy a set of your best silver plated revolvers, how’s that?”

No harm in promises, with that kind of money floating around.

Hell, he might even do it.

**********

God must really hate him, to let him find the one stagecoach in this whole stretch of desert but have there be no water inside it.

“Water,” the lone survivor croaks, longingly, and Rowdy can’t even answer him at first; his own throat’s too raw and dusty. “Water, I’ll give you anything- I’ll give you gold.”

Gold, what does he care about that when he’s dying of thirst too? “Where?”

Carson misunderstands him. Babbles a lot of nonsense about a cemetery while Rowdy searches frantically, turning over bodies and upending dry canteens with scant respect. It’d be all too likely an end, if he were to just keel over right now and add one more to the pile of corpses.

“Out there,” Carson gasps, pointing.

He runs out, and finds it- hot, alkaline, but blessedly liquid. Drinks too much but so satisfying, whooping in delight. Dampens his hat and lets the water run down his face, soothing his sunburns.

When Rowdy comes back, hat brimful of water, Carson’s stopped breathing.

And there’s another man here now. A loudly-dressed bandito of all people, with tears in his eyes and a prayer on his lips.

“Hey. Hey, Carson, don’t die…don’t die! Two hundred thousand in gold, how can you give up with so much to live for? _Santa maria-_ ” and the rest is all a blur, Spanish and maybe something else.

There’s something greatly horrible, about walking towards this scene of private agony- but innocence left him when Favor did. Gently, Rowdy reaches over to close the staring eyes.

“I’m sorry….was he a friend of yours?”

“Him? No, no- I never saw him before, and I curse my luck for it- who are you?”

The memory of Favor’s hard horse sense stops him telling the truth; Rowdy runs a hand through his sun-bleached hair, self-consciously. “These days I go by- Blondie. Uh, what’s your name?”

The bandito looks rather pleased. “Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez.”

“Uh.“

“My friends, I let them call me Tuco. You’re a friend, if you don’t shoot me and you were with Carson before he died- did he say anything to you, about the gold? But- say, you don’t look so good. All that mess on your face. Been out in the sun too long?”

“My-“ _boss, captain, friend_ all run through his head, and none of them are right. “My partner, he got scared. Took all the water and left me to die in the desert.”

Tuco clucks his tongue like a schoolmarm or a mother hen; but there’s a shifting wariness in his eyes that speaks of quick, haunted understanding. “Can’t trust anyone these days, eh? Same thing happened to me, isn’t that funny….”

At the end of a quarter hour, they’ve gotten three things straight.

One, he’s got half the secret to a fortune in gold.

Two, none other than the famous Tuco Ramirez has the other half.

Three, it’s only a little way from here to a monastery where they’ll take good care of him, quiet grey stones and cooling darkness, and as Tuco says, they can hash out the rest of it when he’s better.

“But you have to live and get well first, eh? Don’t worry. Tuco will be a very fine friend to you…”

Might just be the gold; but he has a funny feeling he can trust Tuco.

Then again, he’d thought that about Favor…

*************

_some time later_

“He’s not a good man, my brother,” Pablo says to him.

Rowdy can guess why. A good man wouldn’t have taught him how to smoke cigarillos (“not my favourite, but you smoke what you can get”). A good man wouldn’t have played that nasty trick telling him he was about to die, or got into a shouting match with a priest.

A good man wouldn’t have saved him, probably. “But he’s your brother. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

“Christ’s love exceeds all other,” Pablo intones. “I am trying to warn you away from him. Though he did mention that you have few other choices of company, should you leave.”

“I guess not…”

“But perhaps you won’t have a reason to leave. In this war, there are always more wounded men, more casualties who come crying to our doors for help- we could use a helper with your charity and compassion.”

Rowdy can’t help a little bitterness. “What compassion?”

“For one, you put up with Tuco.” The smile passes quickly, but in that moment it lays the family resemblance bare. “That’s a task to tax the most stalwart patience.”

“He was saving me, though. A stranger he didn’t know at all, he was just playing Good Samaritan.”

If there’s pleasure in Pablo’s expression, it’s hemmed in by caution. “That’s…not wholly characteristic of my brother. Is there something he wants from you? Something you’re not prepared to give, perhaps?”

“No. No, nothing.”

He can imagine what Pablo’s asking, knows well enough why the man suspects an ulterior motive- but he can’t bring himself to explain. Not having seen Tuco’s tired stupor after that fight with his brother, sitting up until dawn and drinking himself bleary-eyed. To cut off that solitary bind, that’s a cruelty he’d shoot a man sooner than commit.

It’s too much like him and Favor, and he’d gladly have given up any share in this impossible fortune if somebody had lied like this, soothed their path smooth again.

“That’s a greater kindness than I think you might recognise,” Pablo says, staring straight into his eyes. “But I- I thank you for telling me this.”

“You will go and make it up with him, won’t you?”

The holy man mutters something that sounds uncommonly like a groan. “He’ll want to toast our family in six kinds of liquor- which wouldn’t be such a problem, if he didn’t expect me to keep up. The other brothers will not approve.”

“If I had a brother, I’d risk a hangover for him,” Rowdy says.

Pablo looks dubious. Says he’ll think about it.

But the sound that wakes Rowdy from his siesta later is, he’s sure, the sound of two glasses ringing against each other.


	3. such grace as he can muster

“Talking won’t save you,” the Captain had said.

Gil Favor’s beginning to understand just what that means.

Because this Captain, this Angel Eyes, has already wrung every last piece of useful information out of him- he’s not Bill Carson, never was, only claimed the name after a swift assessment of his chances in a Union prison camp. Less shame in taking another man’s punishment, than to be taken for a friendly deserter.

(If Rowdy was here, mussing up his hair and muttering about honesty being the best policy-)

(If Rowdy was here, he’d _murder_ this captain just to keep the boy safe. This hell’s no place for him- then again, neither was the desert, and he’s regretted that abandonment again and again-)

The Captain snaps his fingers, abruptly; Wallace stops pounding on him. Favor spits out a bloody tooth, feeling a swift satisfaction at the clatter it makes against his tormentor's belt buckle.

“Do you have any good reasons why I shouldn’t just shoot you?” the Captain asks him. Almost affably. “Any minor tasks you’ve left unattended. Any small chores like that.”

“What is this, you’re playing games now? Think I’ll beg just to amuse one uncultivated Yankee?”

“ _Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare_.”

Been a few years since he was writing out Latin lines in school, but he thinks he can remember the gist. “A fool, sure. Or I’d never have mistaken those dusty uniforms for Johnny Reb.”

The Captain shakes his head. “A reminder for myself, not you. Now as interrogations go, you’ve told me quite a bit- that you won’t forget today any more than I would, that you have a gentleman’s sense of honor- and in turn I’ve told you a few things. More than I wanted to, but there was no other way of finding out what I wanted to know. Now, the sensible thing to do is to shoot you out of hand…unless there’s a reason why I shouldn’t, of course.”

If this torturer is trying to salve his conscience, he can burn in perdition first. “I’ve got nothing to say to you, _Angel_.” How anybody can rest easy being nicknamed like that by his own men, that gives him a shudder.

But the name seems to bring comfort; a smile lingers on his torturer’s lips. “Well. Can’t say I didn’t try. If Tuco ever asks-“

The door swings open, with a bang like a gunshot. “Speak of the devil, eh? Angel Eyes, you’re looking well! I was worried!”

“You- were worried. About me.”

There is a moment when Favor locks eyes with Wallace, equally taken aback, and their mutual loathing melts into shared bewilderment.

“It’s a big war out there,” the interloper says, with disgusting ingratiation. “Even a clever hustler like me got caught up in it, and how was I supposed to know you’d be safe? The one in charge instead of the one in cuffs-“

“Speaking of which, Tuco,” the Captain interrupts. “I’m busy. Interrogating someone- why did they send you in here during choir practice?”

“Oh well, the clerks got confused when I said I was Bill Carson. Said they didn’t see how there could be two Bill Carsons, and I said hey, it’s me, I have this eye patch and everything…”

Whatever else the Mexican says is completely lost on Favor; because he’s seen now the boy following close on this Tuco’s footsteps, looking about with terrified uncertainty.

Uncertainty that freezes into staring immobility, when Rowdy catches sight of him.

A boy’s reaction, a child’s; but Favor’s grateful for that damned immaturity just this once. It gives him the chance to shake his head, throw every ounce of strength he still possesses into one unmistakeable expression. _You don’t see me. You don’t know me. Look away._

Rowdy looks away; and Favor finds it easier to breathe around his shattered bones, once the boy’s buried his face in the _bandito’s_ tattered finery. 

“Hey,” Tuco says. “You okay, partner?”

“I’ve- I’ve seen a few rough things. Done my share even, but what- what happened to him?” Rowdy chokes out.

“That’s not very nice,” Tuco says, gravely and disapprovingly. “Angel Eyes, _mi amor_ , lay off? It’s upsetting my young friend here. And believe me, you don’t want to upset him.”

The Captain looks to be on a knife-edge, half amused and half infuriated. “Now why would that be?”

Tuco glances over at Wallace, at him, manages to shrug a little without shaking Rowdy’s weight off. “Same rainbow we’re all chasing, I think. Two hundred thousand dollars in Confederate gold- and _bomboncita_ here, he knows where it is. So you want to treat him right, Angel. Don’t play rough with this one…”

“I suppose next you’ll be asking me to make him one of my soups.”

Tuco bares his teeth, grinning. “As though you aren’t proud of making the best soup from here to the Rio Grande. Not that you’ll ever have my knack with _poblanos,_ mind…”

The bandito goes so far as to lay hands on the Captain’s own, where they’re permitted to remain, and Favor feels his gorge rise at that shared affection.

This is the kind of thing he was fighting against.

What that gold was meant to be used for, too.

And he’ll do his damnedest to keep it from falling into the hands of a Yankee thief and a Mexican _bandito_ , for so long as there’s still breath in him…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angel's Latin quote runs, more or less, "to err is human, but fools persist in error".


	4. nobody's angel

The ache to be herding again, nothing more to worry about than moving cattle from one spot on a map to another spot, Rowdy wouldn’t have guessed he could want that back again so badly.

But that was simple, so simple he could go a whole day without words. Saluting and cow punching and tumbling down into prairie grass at night, tired enough he wouldn’t wake until the bugle blew. Hadn’t taken much thinking. It was towns where he got into trouble, generally.

Now this campsite isn’t a town, but he’s still in trouble up to his neck- no. No, he musn’t think about that.

He should stay calm. That’ll keep Tuco happy- he’s noticed that much, the way that the banditowill soften words and cajole and even lie to smooth things over, until it gets to be too much and he yells with vinegar, the way he had at Pablo. Behavior like that makes no sense to Rowdy, it really doesn’t.

But left alone like this, he has to take after somebody- well, Favor would tell him to be his own man but what kind of advice is that? Favor lived by it all his life, and all it’s netted him is a one-way ticket to his death with Wallace.

Tuco nudges him. “What’s the matter, don’t you like the soup? There’s plenty of it, you don’t need to steal out of my bowl this time.”

Rowdy flushes, deeply. It’d only been the once, an accident late at night on the road between the monastery and the Union camp, but Tuco seems to have guessed too well what it meant. How he’d found himself trusting this criminal, if only a little.

“Can’t say as I care for the company,” he says out loud; and marvels at how grown-up that sounds.

“Blondie, you know, I am friends with you- but I am also friends with him. So-“

“It doesn’t work that way, Tuco,” Angel Eyes interrupts, with a voice dry and cold as wind in the desert night. “He saw me hurting Favor. He can’t forgive and forget so easily as you can.”

Tuco snorts, looks pained. “I told you about this. One of these days, those exotic tastes would get you into trouble.”

“Hmm,” Angel says, sipping at his own soup. “Not as much trouble as all that, if Blondie’s still willing to lead us to the spot- what’s the situation now, tenderfoot? Now you’re out of that prison camp, are you still willing to lead us there without shooting anyone in the back?”

He doesn’t know anymore, what Favor would do. Try to shoot Angel for torturing a friend of his, maybe. The Colt revolver feels heavy against his thigh.

Rowdy looks around, aware that he’s stalling for time. Stops when he realises why.

“Can’t say as I’d try just at present. I wouldn’t care for your friends to reciprocate...”

\- because he was a cowhand, and he does know how the feel of a campsite changes when there’s rustlers on the prowl, and he’ll be a jumping frog if there isn’t a man or six waiting out there.

Angel laughs at him, a long genuine sound. “All right, fellows. Come out and mind your manners.”

The men file in quietly, weapons in easy reach but not drawn. Help themselves to soup from the pot, as though this has all been planned out.

“Oh, not this lot again,” Tuco says tiredly. “Angel, Angel- no. They left me to die! Seventy five miles from civilisation!”

“Now the way I reckon it, you ought to have seen that coming,” Angel Eyes says. “Letting word of that gold slip, what did you expect?”

“No worse a mistake than leaving that boy alive to gossip,” Tuco retorts. “What’s the matter, Angel, going soft in your old age?”

He’d almost swear, Rowdy thinks, that beneath that ironic exterior Angel’s wincing. “Blind spot. It was a mistake last time, too- all those damned oranges cost me a fortune.”

None of the others seem to understand what that means, and Rowdy certainly doesn’t; but he doesn’t need to grasp the words when he can see Tuco’s barely concealed rage, the way a brown hand tugs for a lanyard and then lets go. “Enough! I don’t trust you, I don’t trust anybody- I’ll make it there myself, and beat you all to the gold.”

“You’ll never reach it alive,” Angel says indolently. “There’s a Union-held river crossing in the way. I’m the one with enough rank to get us all past it-“

Tuco's already picking up his pack, swinging himself over a horse’s back. “Then I’ll swim!”

“He’ll be dead before the day's out. One less claimant for the gold, then,” Angel says dismissively over the sound of galloping hooves. “Don’t worry, Blondie, you can sleep very easy tonight. These here are just a few nice quiet lads who’ll make sure nothing happens to you, trustworthy enough.”

In a war zone like this, Rowdy supposes, this probably is as safe as it gets.

Doesn’t improve his appetite for Angel’s soup, all the same.

*********

A few days later, the men start to disappear.

One while hunting for water, one keeping guard at night. Clean bullet shots through the heart.

It’s not Angel Eyes doing it, at least. The man was napping in clear sight when the first death happened; and the way Angel responds to the loss, shutting up close and turning uncommunicative, that’s enough like Favor for Rowdy to cling close to him. Offering up wordless acceptable comfort, the way he knows how to do. 

It comes to him that this is more than just fretting. That he’s in mourning for Favor- well, at that he’s probably the only one left to do it, considering the wife who went north when Favor stayed south. There’s a kind of sharp hollowness to the pain that hits him every morning- a few moments of breathing in morning air, feeling himself freshly recovered from the desert’s ordeal- and then memory plows into him like an express train and he hurts all over again.

It’s not something he can even talk about, which just makes it ache all the more.

He wishes that Tuco hadn’t left so abruptly. The banditowas loud and reckless enough for any three outlaws, but there’d been an easy kind of trust between them. So the motivation had been selfish enough; that hadn’t made Tuco’s concern for him less real. Riding gently, letting time slip away from them and resting when they liked- he’d never enjoyed such easy laxness before, and the contrast with Angel’s briskly efficient leadership is one that shouldn’t bother him after Favor, but he can’t help some resentment.

With Angel, of course, they’re on a job again. At least he knows how to do that, though he’s not really being allowed to do it properly.

“I know how to scout. I was a ramrod for a whole year, I was good enough at that.”

“Blondie-“ and there’s a muffled sound that might have been a “hmm” or “m’boy” or anything, and Rowdy’s not sure which it is or how to respond. “You are, at present, worth your weight in gold. So unless you want to up and tell me the solitary secret that happens to be keeping you alive, I am taking pains to keep you as well guarded as possible.”

“Mortimer,” one of the men says, beckoning impatiently. “Get off your high horse and decide whether we’re staying the night in this town or not.”

“We’re staying. Blondie here wants a bath.”

Rowdy blinks. He does, in fact, want one- had mentioned that to Tuco in passing, how the next time he had a chance at a real tub instead of a sparing pitcher to clean with, he was going to jump in feet first. “…a deserted town left in ruins by shelling, and there’s a bath here?”

“Yes,” Angel Eyes says rather calmly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

The bath turns out to be a huge metal thing, filled with cool water, and it embarrasses Rowdy hugely to think that some hardened mercenary added all those fluffy bubbles just for him- but then, it’s kinder work than what they’re used to, probably. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

He strips down and sinks into it gratefully, very happy. Starts scrubbing comfortably, even has a go at whistling the _Streets of Laredo_ -

then there’s a shot outside, and his gun’s way off on the other side of the room, why he’ll never get to it in time-

“I’m armed,” Rowdy manages to gasp out as the shooter comes in- and then he sees who it is.

“In a bath, certainly,” Favor says, almost humorously. “How was that going to work, Rowdy, planning to whip out a gun from under the bubbles?”

“Uhm.”

It’s hard for him to think. Surprised, glad to be sure, but anxious- Favor looks ghastly, he must have been through hell. And he would….he would like it better, if Favor would put that gun away instead of leaving it casually pointed at his heart.

“What happened?”

“Wallace is dead. I’m not.”

That’s terse. He’s hardly daring to stir- can’t even reach out and get his jeans, without showing off more of himself than he really feels comfortable with.

“I’ve been tracking this gang, picking them off one by one- those I can, that damned scout is impossible to get a bead on- well. You weren’t going to take them out all by yourself, were you?”

Rowdy’s not too sure how to say, that he hadn’t really been thinking about that at all. That even a seventh or eighth share of two hundred thousand had sounded fine, enough for anybody. “So it’s just us again, then?”

“That’s right. Put your clothes on, we need to get moving.”

It’s a small thing. Not even worth mentioning.

But he can’t help figuring that Tuco would have let him finish the bath first.


	5. subsequent to an arrest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...at the river camp

“I suppose you want me to admire you for this,” Clinton says, contemplating Favor. “Give you a medal, perhaps? A big brassy medal?”

“Just doing my duty. Sir,” Favor says, squaring his shoulders in that big, solid way of his- it’s a comforting gesture. Or should be, Rowdy thinks. 

“And you, Captain Mortimer- what do you have to say, to this charge of abandoning your post?”

Angel’s lips are quirked in amusement, as though he’s lost a few rounds of backgammon and has to pay up the evening stake. “Why, nothing in particular. Favor’s right, I did do my best to flee from a war zone that seemed quite intent on seeing me dead. _Ab absurdo…_ ” 

Clinton throws up his hands. Literally, tossing papers left and right as he stares them all down with near hysterical regard, before he calms himself again. 

It’s a visible effort, and involves violent application of the bottle. 

“The impressive thing about you idiots,” Clinton says, wiping whiskey from his chin, “is how sincere you all are in thinking that any of this _matters._ It doesn’t! You come in here asking for a court martial, justice, the drawn out languishment of a trial when out there men are dying endlessly- endlessly-”

The man’s voice is cracking like a child’s. “Right this very minute, I could have all three of you murdered. Just like that, murdered, would you like to know how? Simply by ordering you out to that bridge. That thrice-damned bridge that eats up men’s lives, I can rid myself of all three of my Bathshebas right now and spent the rest of the evening having myself a solitary drunken spree-”

Rowdy’s not even sure, what kind of daring gives him the nerve to pull the whiskey bottle from Clinton’s limp fingers; but he can’t take silence any longer. “I think maybe you’ve had enough to drink already.” 

(Maybe that’s Angel’s gun at his back; maybe it’s Favor’s hand. They don’t seem so important right now.)

Clinton fumbles for the bottle but only weakly, stops. “Yates, is it?”

“Yessir.” 

“You’d make a good officer, Yates. Captain Favor, take your prisoner out and do what you want with him, I’d just as soon not wallow in the details.” 

“I think you may have had the right idea all along, sir,” Favor says. “A death or glory charge…if he survives to the end of that bridge, we can let him off the hook.” 

“As you will,” Clinton says, very weary. “Stay with me, Yates. I want to talk.” 

Rowdy hesitates, sick with concern- there’s that in Favor’s strained, too-clipped voice that says the man’s close to breaking point. All four of them, at that. 

Or all three, perhaps; he can smell pipe smoke. Closer to death than any of them, and yet Angel’s still and calm. 

“You don’t care about this flyspeck on a map,” Angel says, puffing. “You tried to hang on to belief in your ideals, but that didn’t carry you through wanton slaughter from sunrise to sunset. So now you’re taking refuge in indifference. Directing all that anger, at one foul bridge that you have to hold from the enemy at all costs.” 

“You talk my language, but…I don’t take your meaning.” 

“Try my remedy,” Angel says, very easily. “Abandon your post too…this is Captain Favor of the Confederate Army. Incognito, of course, but you can surrender to him. All this death at an end, and all you have to do is throw over your faith for good.” 

Clinton chokes out a laugh, but it doesn’t seem to bring him any relief. “You’re what?”

“And this Yates was his right hand man. They’ll rise or fall together, just as you say. What about it, Favor, will you take this man’s surrender?” 

Time’s not frozen, Rowdy thinks. But they are. 

Outside there’s screaming and cannonfire and the shedding of blood, inside there’s nothing but Angel’s icy cool and Clinton’s distorted agony and his own sick confusion, waiting to turn the world upside down and tip him off. 

And Favor. And Favor, grinding out words as though it’s tearing his heart out to say them. 

“I could not accept such a surrender. I’m a deserter from the Confederate Army, and deserve no rights nor privileges.” 

“Headquarters is always in the market for a practical traitor,” Clinton says, blinking in bewilderment. “You want to cart your prisoner down there and take your thirty pieces of silver?” 

“I’ll have none of this war again, your side or mine,” Favor says, evenly. “Keep your Captain Mortimer, maybe he’ll win this bridge for you. He’s just the bastard to do it.” 

He walks to the tent flap, walks out. Rowdy runs after him. 

If he lost Favor now, there isn’t going to be another chance for them. 


	6. apotheosis

_a day and a battle later_

None of this makes sense, and he’s going to die. 

Apparently there comes a point when a body can get used to that. 

Rowdy shivers, throwing himself down in the grass. He’d like to play dead, look like one of the corpses scattered across this part of the countryside like mile markers; but he’s too cold or scared or plain nervy to do it. The shaking will give him away to anyone who sees him; and he’s not even sure that matters anymore. 

This isn’t like the war he remembers being in, with Favor. That’d been lofty and romantic, full of sweet chivalrous ideals about the Confederacy, and more to the point, no deaths. Herding cattle to the slaughter, he understands that. Not men. 

Not a whole army of men, two of them, charging across a bridge-

He hears a low, moaned cry and wonders vaguely which side the sufferer is coming from, aware all the time it wouldn’t make a difference. Union or Confederate, he can’t let his tired body sit by when someone’s pleading like that, bubbling up tears and terror that sound so familiar he can hardly credit that they aren’t coming from his own mouth. 

It takes a fair amount of hunting, and he’s not even sure when he finds the body that it’s the right one- there’s so many others around like it- but then he notices the slight rise and fall of breath, beneath a long green poncho. 

On the other side of that poncho there’s blood stains, and maybe a doctor could save this boy, no older than he is, but he certainly can’t. Can’t give any help to those wordlessly imploring eyes- well, maybe one way. 

Tuco’s tin box of cigarillos is still wholesome when he opens it. None of the tobacco was spoilt by the river water.

(Who’d blown it up like that, dynamite turning everything to rubble, sending him crashing down a water-slicked beam into the mud? Another thing that doesn’t make any sense, when both sides wanted it as badly as- gold.)

The boy can’t seem to move at all. So he places the cigarillo with his own hands, watching in quiet satisfaction as the tortured features soften, a little awareness of pleasure against pain. 

Sees himself reflecting in failing vision, still as stone - not looking like himself, but someone older, wiser, better than anybody could possibly be- and it’s in his mouth to say how wrong that all is. How mistaken. 

But it isn’t a part he’ll have to play for very long; and it’s him a little. Favor’s solitude too, and Tuco’s compassion and Clinton’s rage and maybe even that crazy Angel’s irony. Knowing that he’ll walk away and be alive, when this boy’s dead. 

When it happens, he takes the cigarillo back to finish smoking it; and as an afterthought, the poncho also. 

Now he’s alone, he’s started shivering again. 


	7. por Favor

The hill of Sad Hill Cemetery is the highest point around for miles. Enough to see clear to the river in one direction, far into the west from the other.

Rowdy doesn’t like it much. Feels too exposed, now he's been found again.

“We’ll camp here for the night,” Favor says, lighting the fire. “Dig up the gold in the morning when we’re fresh, head out for home- where did that poncho come from? You look ridiculous in it.”

“Stole it from a corpse.” He’s much too tired to make up stories any more.

“Well, take it off. You’re not a thief.”

“We’re going to be, aren’t we? All that gold?”

“Of course not. We’ll bring it right back to its rightful owners, Carson’s regiment. I think,” Favor pronounces, looking very nearly happy, “I think that amount of gold could wipe out more than a few bad moments. We’ll be back herding cattle again as though we never quit.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to splutter, to ask stupid questions, but Rowdy holds off and won’t let himself say anything until he’s got it all straight in his head. “Just like before, then.”

“Exactly.” Favor’s frowning at him, and for once Rowdy simply has no idea why- that quick and easy sympathy between them completely lost. “Poncho.”

Even holds out his hand for it. Rowdy fingers the tassels, has it over his head and noticing the chill evening wind before he stops short.

“Mr Favor…” it comes out of him in a calm, dispassionate voice, one he had no idea he possesses. “You need to understand. Things have changed.”

“This isn’t like you, Rowdy,” Favor says, every word a warning. “It’s a temptation- a mighty temptation, I’ll grant you- but you’ll come through it. We both will, we know the difference between right and wrong-“

Favor always could talk circles around him, there’s no denying that. He can stay and listen, sink back into that companionship his heart’s been longing for-

if he can-

if he dares-

********

 _Festina lente._ A aphorism Favor lives by as well, evidently.

The man can afford to linger, or thinks he can; between picking off the last of my mercenaries and seeing me in cuffs, there shouldn’t be anybody else to hamper the cemetery desecration he’s planning. It suggests an efficiency of effort to match my own; we might have made choice adversaries, in less fraught and unpredictable times.

Unpredictable enough to see to my own survival, true, so no reason to complain. In peacetime I might have been graced with the inexorable certainty of a firing squad, instead of a hopeless rifle charge.

Hopeless, that is, to the enthusiasts in front. I took care to be in back.

Tuco-

(I would falter, were there any witnesses to see it; but there can’t be now.)

Tuco would have wanted it that way. Would have wanted me to win this little skirmish with Favor, never mind morality. Two hundred thousand dollars.

I can’t, honestly, say I know what I’ll do with it, without a greedy partner to suggest how to spend it. Perhaps Pablo’s monastery could do with an unexpected benefactor, masses purchased for a soul- that much I surely owe my _inamorato_ , but how does anyone tell a man he’s been left orphaned and brotherless in the same week?

_Shut up, Angel. You get the money first, then you worry about me._

As though there’s room for worry. Buying my freedom from Clinton in wires and explosives, covering the necessary work in a charge of blood and water. The price paid to be no concern of mine- as it wouldn’t have been, if I hadn’t made the mistake of looking back. Like Lot’s wife, like Orpheus, to see a hundred lives sink into the river and only a single one to matter, my lover's face caught and wreathed in fire-

How dare Clinton see my uniform, and make it anything less than a lie.

How dare I agree to live up to it. Tuco was right, the lies that hustlers speak have the damnedest way of turning to truth- so this bridge is a Union victory, and no doubt that alcoholic dyspeptic is toasting his own imminent death in his men’s blood.

And I wouldn’t give a jot for that, if my _bandito_ had made it through- but he hasn’t.

So now there’s nothing left but the gold; and yet I’ll be damned if I let Favor take it, with the price it’s already cost.

Blondie’s started a quarrel, I notice absently. If you can call such a one-sided affair a quarrel. He’s reserved and placid as one of the cows he used to herd, while Favor is working up a temper- not too much of a one, surely, a fortune in gold is worth an evening’s coddling-

but perhaps the man can’t restrain himself for so long as that. Because as Favor tears away a dark green bundle, Blondie jumps up and starts to run.

It’s a long way down Sad Hill, crashing through scree and grass and jumping over tombstones. Down towards the heart of the cemetery, a tree and a noose and the flatness of dust. Down to where the ghosts would surely gather, if they existed.

Of course there’s none here, except myself.

Blondie’s gasping when he reaches the valley bottom, his serene masquerade turned to sheer exhaustion. Not quite the stately paragon of silence he aspires to.

If he looked cocksure, an ounce more threatening, I’d have no qualms about shooting him on the spot. No amount of gold will cure a bullet wound; and may all Tuco's saints help me, but he wouldn’t forgive me for killing him and then _dying_.

If Blondie looked any more frightened, boyish, I’d be sure he’d told Favor the secret. And shoot him down just the same, to save the two guns against my one.

As it stands, that very ambiguity holds him safe.

********

There’s a noose hanging over his head, and it doesn’t make any sense that it’s here but the story fits too perfectly. No reason for Favor to waste a bullet on him, when the unearned punishment he’s run and run to escape can be meted out right here-

“This ends now.”

He can see who Favor means it for, when Angel Eyes steps out of nowhere; but that doesn’t frighten Rowdy any less. None of this does.

“Shall we have a duel for it? Twenty paces?”

The tone’s mocking, maybe; but Angel’s terse withdrawal is every bit as serious as Favor’s stolid nobility, and Rowdy just wants to scream at them. A day with this much death, this much blood in it, and they’re still looking for excuses to wallow in more-

he pulls the Colt from the holster as they bow to each other, start walking apart. Twenty paces, Rowdy remembers. He’s seen Favor do this once before.

Remembers Favor telling him to fire, if the bastard broke with honor and turned to shoot a man in the back. He could do that much.

He could do that anyway. Angel’s moving into the distance, vulnerable and fragile as any man-

and if he doesn’t, considering Angel’s deftness with a gun, Favor’s almost sure to lose-

_give me a sign, Gil. Just one look, just a flicker of your eyes. I’ll throw over my honor and the gold and everything else to keep you if you’ll have me-_

Ten paces. Five. Three.

One.

The shot Blondie gets off, gun balanced against his arm, he thinks it might be the prettiest he ever fired.


	8. here comes everybody

“You didn’t shoot me.”

“You didn’t shoot me,” Blondie says, leaning against the tree. He’s dusty, hands begrimed with dirt after covering up Favor’s impromptu grave.

“I couldn’t have if I’d tried. Somebody seems to have emptied out my bullets.” I toss the weapon to him, watch him open the empty chamber.

“…that wasn’t Favor,” Blondie says slowly. “That’s a dirty trick, he’d never.”

“If you say so.” I’m reasonably certain that no one else had a chance at my weapon back at the river camp, but there’s no use complaining to my benefactor. “Why not kill me?”

“For one thing…I suppose I was scared.” There’s shame in him, something nearly sheepish. “See, I still don’t have any idea where the gold is. I learned from Carson it was Sad Hill Cemetery, but that’s all I know. Guess I was more scared of telling him that, than you.”

I look around, at the innumerable tombstones and crosses and graves, and can’t hold back the slow chuckle Tuco taught me.

“And then too, he did leave me to die in a desert…but I guess that’s all by the by, really. The thing I was really thinking of, is if I killed you, somebody would remember that. Somebody would come for me. Nobody’ll ever come for Gil.”

“Nobody would be coming for me either.” It’s unsettling, to realise my life hinged on a mistake. “Tuco died in the bridge explosion, I saw him thrown into the water.”

“…huh. Count yourself lucky, I guess.” He tosses my gun back, loosely toys with his Colt.

“No second-guessing? No revenge?”

“Too much blood today already. I’ve had enough.” Blondie’s looking west now, far into the distance. “Guess I’ll go off, see what I can make of myself. My own man at last- funny thing is, I think Favor would be proud of that?”

This boy’s too young to disappear into solitude like this, but I can’t stop him. Wouldn’t have known to save myself, if I hadn’t found my Tuco- and his breed of unrelenting compassion was the rarest of gems.

Just the memory of it, that’s enough to make me soften. “You won’t find yourself an easy life as a wanted outlaw. I could bring you back to the Union camp, arrange to clear the charges-“

“No,” Blondie says. Simply and tersely.

Which seems to settle matters. I watch as he rises and starts the lonely walk away, listening to the empty howl of the wind-

and a faint, familiar whooping, not far in the distance- my name. Someone calling my name, and it must be a ghost calling. There’s not a man alive who shouts like that, in joyous Latin-tinged Spanish-

and it makes not one _particle_ of difference that my sanity’s snapped, I can’t but run towards it. Pounding over the graves with my heart in my mouth, ready to throw myself at the spectre and give up my soul into its clutches-

only when I crash into something, it’s blessedly _alive._ Hot, solid as earth.

“Ow,” Tuco says. Rather ruefully. “Nice to see you too, Angel.”

“….ah.”

He always was one to babble, when he saw me too fraught to talk. “Cheer up, Angel, cheer up! We’re all right. Such a time I had tracking you- didn’t make it easy on me, did you? A whole bridge going down…well I know I said I’d swim it, that doesn’t mean you needed to take me so literally. Hey. Hey, did any of the mercenaries make it?”

“Gil Favor trimmed them down very efficiently for us- well, except for Diego. I had to take him out myself.”

Tuco clucks. “I always did warn him, you didn’t like him very much. Too bad he never listened to me- what happened to Favor?”

“Blondie killed him…there was a lot of bad blood there, it seems. And he was frightened of admitting he didn’t have the gold at all, he only knew it was in this cemetery. We’ll never find it.”

“Well, he’ll never find it…” Tuco chuckles to himself. “It’s the unmarked grave next to Arch Stanton’s. See, that was the half of the secret I had- that’s why I had to track you all the way here. This whole war, it wasn’t so easy to find the right cemetery as I thought it would be.”

“And how are we supposed to find _that_ , in fifteen thousand?”

“Oh, it’s right over there. I found it just before you rammed into me like a cannonball.”

“…Tuco Ramirez. Do you have any notion, how much you don’t deserve your luck?”

“Not a bit of it,” Tuco says, very comfortably. “All we need now is a shovel, and then I think we hole up in my brother’s monastery until this stupid war’s over. It’ll be much safer to spend the money then…wait, so Blondie’s still alive?”

“Alive and whole and fetching his horse right now- no, he seems to have found it already. That must be him riding away in the distance.”

“Can’t have that. I won’t be killed in my bed by some angry _gringo_ who was cheated out of his third of a fortune- hey! Hey, Blondie!”

When Blondie doesn’t turn, Tuco starts running towards him, loping over the grass in that silly way of his. “Blondie, get back here! You know what you are-”

There’s a moment when I’m convinced that Blondie is about to shoot him out of hand.

But it passes. And he comes riding back towards us at a gallop, willing if confused.

“What the hell is it?”

“You look like a smart boy, do some sums for me,” Tuco smirks. “What’s a third of two hundred thousand? We just need to dig it up, that’s your share.”

“It’s blood money,” Blondie says. “Keep it. I don’t think it’ll do me any good.”

Unbelievable; but then, a hundred thousand is a nice tidy sum, and one I won’t object to. 

Tuco shrugs. “Okay. If you say so…but hey, at least stick around for supper. Green pepper chili, to match that poncho? Angel now, he can make one that’s sweet and spicy both.”

Blondie’s weakening, visibly. “Tuco…I don’t deserve that kind of forgiveness. Yours or anybody else’s.”

“Then maybe it helps, that we don’t either,” Tuco says softly. “Anybody innocent would have never made it here alive, Blondie. We’re just the ones who survived.”

“I have to- I have to learn how to make it alone. It’s the only thing that Favor ever wanted from me.” He’s fragile but so resolute, and I can see Tuco’s soft face crumpling against that flinty desperation- my partner needs kindness too, and there’s only so much of it I can give him.

Maybe that’s what’s always broken us apart, before.

“Well, forget about what you want,” I say, calm and tranquil. “I have a soup to make. And a bullet with your name on it, if you even think about leaving before you’ve finished a bowl.”

Blondie’s imperturbable facade finally cracks; what’s left is a boy laughing at my idiocy. “If I don’t try your soup, you’ll shoot me? That’s the stupidest…just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard…”

“He takes his soup very seriously,” Tuco tells him, gravely. Starts helping Blondie off his mount, delicately adjusting the folds of that blood-streaked poncho. Blondie watches him with split attention, half of it still directed at me in incredulity.

Hmm. Something of a proposition, this.

Still.

If he doesn’t end the night agreeing that I make the _best_ damn soup he’s ever tasted, I’ll tell Blondie to go ahead and shoot me without hindrance…why not? Tuco’ll kill him if he tries.

But seeing the way he responds to my partner? All that tired longing given outlet at last…

I don’t think it’s going to come to that.


End file.
